‘Take A Veteran to School’ event joins generations

Chula Vista High School ninth-grader Felix Goetz does pushups for Army Staff Sergeant Lissette Callahan during the Take a Veteran to School Day program at the school. Callahan was one of many active duty service members along with veterans who spoke to students about their jobs, experiences, and the military.

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Chula Vista High School ninth-grader Felix Goetz does pushups for Army Staff Sergeant Lissette Callahan during the Take a Veteran to School Day program at the school. Callahan was one of many active duty service members along with veterans who spoke to students about their jobs, experiences, and the military.

For the more than 30 students in Adam Nuncio’s world history class, the inaugural “Take A Veteran to School” event at Chula Vista High School last week was an opportunity to ditch their textbooks for a day and instead learn firsthand from the history makers. The 10th graders’ authentic curiosity and rapt attention for the past and present military personnel standing before them was as moving as any Veterans Day ceremony.

For the 40 veterans and active duty military who participated on four-member panels in more than a dozen classrooms on the sprawling Chula Vista campus, it was an opportunity to share their experiences — the mundane as well as the harrowing — of war and peace.

The veterans and active duty came from the USS Midway Museum, Chula Vista’s VFW Post 2111 and American Legion Post 434, among other groups and commands. Still others, like 90-year-old Ruth Adams, who served as a nurse in Germany in World War II, came from the California Veterans Home in Chula Vista.

Students escorted their honored guests around campus and to their speaking engagements. After those presentations, a patriotic assembly was held in the performing arts theater that included state Sen. Ben Hueso, Congressman Juan Vargas and Chula Vista Mayor Cheryl Cox.

World history teacher Diana Kulhanek was the tour de force behind Chula Vista High’s “Take a Veteran to School.” An ardent supporter of the VFW post near her Lakeside home, she reached out to other groups in search of vets and active-duty service members willing to share their time and military experiences with the students.

“I hope the students would realize that we have to honor those who have served and those who have lost their lives fighting for our country’s rights,” Kulhanek said.

Some of the tales told last week were jaw-dropping like the job description of 25-year-old Taylor Smith, a petty officer. When the Bay Area native joined the Navy right out of college, he went into the dive program and soon was tasked as an underwater photographer looking for the remains of lost service members around the world.

“It’s definitely something that I would not have expected before I joined, and my family couldn’t be prouder,” said Smith, who works out of Fleet Combat Camera Pacific in Coronado and will be deployed next month to Bahrain.

Connie Anderson, an Army dentist in the Korean War, said the most exciting memory she had was being flown from Germany to Denver to work on the teeth of a retired general. She was thrilled to be at the “Take a Veteran to School” event.

“I feel very privileged that I was asked to be here today,” she said.

Mauricio Aparicio, 65, a retired Navy captain who served as a medical corpsman in Vietnam and Beirut and later was the department head for surgical nursing at Balboa Naval Hospital, was one of the speakers in Nuncio’s class. Among his military decorations are the Purple Heart, the Navy Achievement Medal and the Navy Commendation Medal Gold Star.

Aparicio told the students of one historic day in which he had a part — Oct. 23, 1983. He had just returned to his ship after visiting the Marine barracks he stayed in on weekends in Beirut. He narrowly missed the terrorist bombs that ripped through the barracks killing 221 Marines, making it the deadliest day for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. Back on his ship, Aparicio and his fellow corpsmen worked around the clock to save the 165 wounded in the attack.

Navy Lt. Miranda Williams said one of her strongest memories, so far, was videotaping World War II veterans who were prisoners of war and endured cruel treatment similar to that depicted in the movie, “Bridge Over the River Kwai.” Some of them had never spoken of that time until they got before Williams’ camera. They recounted the day a group of them were forced into a work party.

“One of the things their captors would do was turn on an English speaking radio station to mess with their minds,” Williams told the 10th graders. “On this particular day, they were pretty low. They had not eaten in a long time, they’d been made to do physical work.

“At some point, the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ came on and every single one of them stood up at attention. They were helping each other to stand in some cases and they told me that for some of them, this was the turning point. It gave them that hope again, that thought of why they still had to fight. They were there to survive to come back to their country, to their loved ones.”

The last question of the session came from 10th grader Joseph Vierling.

“Did you ever feel like you were in a situation where you wouldn’t make it?”